Mobile ESPN Will End Venture, Seek New Strategy — ESPN, a unit of Walt Disney Co., plans to pull the plug on its sports-themed mobile-telephone venture later this year but hopes to expand its wireless presence by licensing its Mobile ESPN application to other providers.

Sony issues global li-ion battery recall — Sony has finally bitten the bullet and issued a worldwide recall of all Sony-manufactured lithium-ion batteries used in notebook computers. Earlier in the day, Lenovo/IBM joined the ranks of Dell, Apple, and Toshiba in issuing a recall for all Sony batteries that ship with their notebooks.

Yahoo's BBAuth Will Allow Better Mashups — Yahoo has released a new product called BBAuth just in time for its open HackDay today and tomorrow. It's a mechanism for non-Yahoo applications to access Yahoo's authentication mechanism and user data in a secure manner.

Launching the Un-Launch-Able — Opening up Yahoo! I've been looking forward to this day and writing this exact post for quite some time now! So this is it! Wow, this feels great! We just pushed Browser Based Authentication (BBAuth) out the door. — Let's start this post with what BBAuth is and what it can be used for.

Ken SCATHES Rebtel and Jajah; I pile on — I'll take a liberty here and say that Ken Camp has an "old-school" telecommunications background. That's not a bad thing. It just means he knows HOW we got to WHERE we got. And I appreciate that. There are some younger VoIP bloggers …

The "Web 2.0 'exit strategy'" badges — About a month and a half from now there will be in San Francisco the third conference dedicated to Web 2.0, a favorable location for a discussion, in pragmatic words, about the existence of not of a "Bubble 2.0". — With the definitive affirmation of blogs …

If The Map Is Wrong, You Have Nobody To Blame But Yourself — from the cartography-2.0 dept — Online mapping services have proven to be very popular, and the technology that can produce accurate driving directions on the fly is definitely impressive. But there are still gaps in the technology …

SHIFT: The Web 2.0 Drinking Game — Each week Adam Frucci takes a closer look at the latest gadget buzz in his column, Shift. — Image by Matt Krueger — I'll apologize right now for using "Web 2.0" in the title of this column. It's a terrible buzzword, but it defines the very sites …

The Wii - What Real People Think — I have been writing and reviewing games for quite some time and I always fear that I will become overly bias and way to picky when it comes to my job. That is why I decided to give a few young gamers I meet at the Wii Fusion Tour a chance to speak …

Google Reader Redesign — Google's RSS reader underwent a major redesign (take a look at the video [WMV] to get an impression). Now, the subscribed feeds and most other navigation items are showing to the left. Google wants you to think of the new design as "your inbox for the web."

HP to acquire Voodoo PC — update Voodoo PC has agreed to be acquired by Hewlett-Packard, Voodoo founder and Chief Technology Officer Rahul Sood announced on his blog Thursday. — Details of the transaction were not released. Rahul Sood and his brother Ravi, currently the CEO of Voodoo …

Back to School with the Class of Web 2.0: Part 1 — With the start of the new school year, many teachers and students are seeking new products and technologies to help them through their upcoming academics. With the increase of teachers using blogs and wikis, and students networking …

Why Alexa Is Worthless — Alexa is a tool that many webmasters and advertisers used to gauge the size of a website. The Alexa ranking is based on a three month running average. The number shown is where a site ranks on the internet. For example, The TechZone has a ranking of 23,005.

Yahoo teams up with HP on search engine — SAN FRANCISCO - Yahoo Inc. (Nasdaq:YHOO - news) said Thursday it has struck a deal with Hewlett-Packard Co. to plant its Internet search engine on millions of computers, the latest volley in a high-stakes battle with Google Inc. and Microsoft Corp.

From signed up to satisfied — Getting new users is easy; keeping them is hard. Join Intercom co-founder Des Traynor as he explains how to bridge the gap between a company's initial traction and sustained success.